A British civil servant was jailed for six months yesterday for leaking an "extremely sensitive" memo detailing talks on Iraq between US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Communications officer David Keogh was found guilty at London's Central Criminal Court on Wednesday of unlawfully passing the four-page document to Leo O'Connor, a researcher for anti-war Labour MP Anthony Clarke.
The memo, details of which had been published in British newspapers in 2005, allegedly recounted how Blair dissuaded Bush from attacking the Qatar headquarters of satellite television news channel al-Jazeera.
The court was told the four-page document was so sensitive that much of the trial had to be heard behind closed doors in the interests of national security.
O'Connor, who was found guilty of a similar charge to Keogh, was jailed for three months.
Sentencing the pair yesterday, Judge Richard Aikens told Keogh: "Without consulting anyone, you decided on your own that it was in the best interest of the United Kingdom that this letter should be disclosed. Your reckless and irresponsible action in disclosing this letter when you had no right to could have cost the lives of British citizens."
"This disclosure was a gross breach of trust of your position as a Crown servant. You are someone who had been specially vetted to deal with classified documents to the highest degree of sensitivity," he said.
The talks between Blair and Bush detailed in the memo took place in Washington in April 2004, in the run-up to a handover of power to Iraqis by the US-led coalition authority.
Keogh, who thought the memo exposed the US president as a "madman," believed it could raise questions in Britain's lower chamber House of Commons and wanted it passed on to US presidential hopeful John Kerry, the court heard.
He copied the memo from a confidential fax which came through to the Cabinet Office while he was on duty, before passing it to O'Connor, who placed the memo in Clarke's constituency office, prosecution lawyers claimed.
The lawmaker then handed it into Downing Street, the Prime Minister's London residence.
An investigation was launched, leading to the charges and trial.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS